It’s that time of year when some plants need to snuggle and others just need an early start in a good heated propagator.

It has been a reasonably mild winter so far – mild enough, at least, for me to forget to bring my poor pelargoniums in from the balcony. But I’ve spotted a dusting of thicker frost here and there in the past few days, and so it’s time to do some proper overwintering – and to get out some early indoor salads to cheer me out of the post-Christmas slumber.

I’ve been using a new Vitopod propagator from Greenhouse Sensation (full review to come when I’ve finished playing with it), and my first two tasks with this smaller double-height propagator are to spark a bit of life into my orchids, which are fed up of hanging around in a rather chilly flat where the heating is off all day while its owners are at work, and to sow some salads.

So this is what I’ve done:

Two orchids raised to a good summery temperature of 22 degrees (the thermostat below shows the current temperature in the propagator of 15 degrees and the desired temperature, which at that point was 29 degrees).

And I’ve sown three trays of salad leaves as I’m longing for that soft freshness that you just can’t get from even the loveliest overwintered kale and chard.

I’ll be curious to see how long these take to germinate in such a warm environment.

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